


Dust Storm

by Cara_Loup



Series: Transitions [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 06:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2956283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cara_Loup/pseuds/Cara_Loup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half-blind and lost in a sandstorm, change is all Han can see. Beautiful, terrible change.<br/>T<span class="small">RANSITIONS</span> 4: Across the gaps and unexpected twists in the known story, this series explores the changes in Han and Luke’s lives from their first encounter to the battle of Endor — and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dust Storm

Most of the time, it felt like walking on crushed glass. Until the weather grew worse, and the grit and sand started coming at them from all sides. Crazy, to try crossing the badlands on foot, though it wasn’t like they’d had much of a choice.

Han took little comfort from the fact that he wasn’t the only one without visual navigation anymore. Just when his eyes had started to get better ― enough to distinguish burning slopes of sand from a blazing slate of sky ― the wind drove dust in sheets across the vista. Bound to get dangerous soon; if they didn’t reach the parked ships fast, the coming storm might still get a chance to pick their bones clean.

 _No way. Not after all this_. The thought pushed through a haze as thick as the swarming sand. Searching for a focus of some kind.

Something decisive, like the heatflare of Jabba’s sailbarge going up in flame that left a ragged afterimage in bright turquoise.

 _Alive_.  
 _We’ve made it, we’re outta here_.

An ignition sequence that started with the flash of Luke’s lightsaber, blazing up out of nowhere. Too bad that the skiff they’d hijacked was leaking fuel and died on them halfway across to the Falcon.

 _The Falcon_. If his mangled sense of balance had been up to it, Han would’ve lengthened his strides. Maybe he wasn’t up to flying her yet, but when his stomach wasn’t roiling, his whole body tingled for the feel of acceleration, the subsonic vibrations that measured top speeds, even the stale smells of spilled coolant and anti-freeze that never cleared out entirely.

“Easy,” Leia murmured from the side, voice muffled by a shawl and the snatching wind. She held his arm in a death grip, steering him on a straight course whenever he faltered.

Before them, in Luke’s footprints, marched the shadow that was Lando, bent into the pummeling blasts. Right behind them, Chewie had turned himself into a living windbreak as the weather picked up. His heavier steps crunched defiantly in the sand.

Caught in the middle of trackless gray whirls, Han tried to moor himself to those bearings, but the heaves of giddiness came without pattern or warning. Reality just sloped away like so much blowsand, sensations fell apart on the edge of awareness and stripped him down to all-out numbness. Blind again.

During those moments, he fumbled for recollection ― any memory that could center his instincts and help his body level out in a void. Ten times more taxing than zero gravity. But the fractured sights and sounds that came spinning made no linear connections.

Light shredding through a grid, refracted by Chewie’s howls.

Ruddy flickers that etched Leia’s face with grief.

Crusted ice on Luke’s cheeks and forehead and snow crystals on his mouth, a whisper going out with the white breath ―

“Han?” Leia’s voice was closer this time, anxious and unfamiliar for it.

“I’m all right.” At least his vocal cords cooperated without a problem.

“You need a break.” Her fingers dug through his sleeve.

“We don’t have time.”

Lando swung out of the haze ahead. “Afraid he’s right, Leia. It’s another mile to go.”

Another mile. Lando added something, but recollection flip-flopped and replayed other cues in Lando’s voice.

 _You’re being put into carbon freeze_.  
 _He’s after somebody called Skywalker_.  
 _They arrived right before you did. I’m sorry_...

Lando’s little deal on the side seemed like the only link that tied it all together in a knot of scathing anger. Han swallowed thickly. Luke had escaped the trap somehow, and he was missing too much time, too many links of cause and effect. Lando’s presence here meant he’d made good on his slip meanwhile. Chewie would be tearing his limbs off otherwise. _So save your energy_.

Through the hiss of wind lashing up the dust, Han could hear occasional clanks from the droids. They lumbered along at a painful crawl. That Threepio had stopped complaining about the sand clogging his joints probably meant there was actual damage at hand.

The notion dredged up a clear visual. Of the golden body dismembered, jumbled limbs and metal curves heaped into a packing crate. With the memory came the strangest sweep of regret. Sympathy for a droid ― and what next? _Hell, Solo, you’re in real bad shape_.

But that single random image preserved the vague shine of something whole. A glitter in the smooth patterns that ran past him now, close but out of range.

White stretches barged in between those ragged islands of memory, sharp-edged like the sheeted ice on Hoth in blinding sunlight. And his face burned from abrasive grit just like it had burned in the snowstorm... all that time ago.

How long had it been?

He couldn’t force that question out of his throat where it’d been stuck since those frantic moments of waking. When solid reality sharded through him, a violent barrage of sound and touch and gravity that spun his head and plunged nausea into his gut.

Then, somewhere close, a metallic rattle unscrambled into Leia’s voice. _Someone who loves you_.

He’d summoned her name, felt the dry, fervent pressure of her lips that made it hard to breathe ― in, out ― and she pulled away again, slipped out from under his touch.

Cold stone slammed up against him as if it would break his back. Jabba’s ugly laugh echoed the sound of his entrapment while the pitch darkness staggered in circles around him.

 _Breathe, breathe, breathe_...

Soundless repetitions of a single word wrapped protectively around him. He steadied and pulled up the goggles that clipped his unreliable vision. Squinted into the flying dust.

Luke walked at the head of their sorry procession, lean and black like a blade cutting the wind shears. Odd, how he could always pinpoint Luke’s position exactly, from that first shout in Jabba’s palace. But it looked like the storm had let up a bit, the fine sand hovering around them in a boundless blur.

He leaned closer to Leia. “Luke’s all right? I got the impression... he took a hit in the fighting?” Uncertain, Han pulled at the vague shreds of evidence. “Think I heard him cry out.”

“He’s unhurt for all I can tell.” Something troubled laced her voice. “In fact, he’s ― I wasn’t too sure about his plan at first, but that was before I saw what he could do.”

“Yeah. Pretty amazing.”

“That’s hardly the word I would use.” A hint of amusement suggested Leia’s wry smile and covered the tracks of unease.

 _A Jedi_. One of the first scraps of news that’d pierced his foggy state, and he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Han flung his free arm out for balance. Though the storm no longer blasted them front and back, the drifts were getting deeper, and with each step he sank in to mid-calf. Beneath his boots, he felt the sand slipslide every which way, like gravitational eddies that screwed with his sense of direction.

“Come on, wrap your arm around my shoulders ― like this.” Leia propped herself against his side just as dizziness battered him again.

White flashes on the edge of sight. White brilliance chewed on every thought and perception, pressing in and in. While his vision frazzled out, distant smells had grown stronger, harsh traces blown over from the saltlakes that flared white in his optical nerve.

 _Breathe_ ―

The sand’s dragging weight sucked at his boots, but a firm touch under his left elbow caught him at the next step. Luke.

“I’m slowing you down,” he rasped.

“And you think we’ll just leave you behind?” Leia forced a note of humor just for his benefit. “We’re all here because of you.”

Luke said nothing, though his grip tightened.

 _Now_ , Han told himself. He kept his eyes straight ahead where nothing intruded. “Tell me one thing... how long’s it been?”

The answer came from his left, from Luke, falling dry and flat among wind-blown sheets of sand. “Six months, Han.”

A puncture in the vague stretch of loss, and it drained time like a black hole. Too much to take in. Han shook his head, unwilling. Beside him, he heard Luke breathe out slowly.

But what was that smell? Like charred skin or burned insulation or both, though he should be able to tell the difference. It dwindled when Luke moved away again, with that spring of absolute determination in his step.

Han cleared his throat. “He’s injured.”

“It’s only a graze. His hand―” Leia broke off, adjusting the shawl that muffled her voice. “His hand will be fine.”

 _Six months_ ―

In the nebulous gloom ahead twisted drunken shadows like localized squalls, if it wasn’t his vision playing tricks on him again. Han fumbled with the goggles and the world darkened another shade.

While his sight still took its own sweet time to recover, his sense of touch was going off the scales. He could feel the dust grains scrape against his throat, slide under his shirt with a strange sharpness of sensation that came and went. His skin prickled, and it felt oddly pleasant. Like drawing energy from all the jangling atoms of air and sand.

Leia’s fingers tightened around his arm. “Not much longer. If only we could see more.” A gust of wind was eating the words from her mouth, and she inched closer, all the worry in her grip and none in her voice. “Luke is familiar with this area. He’ll get us there safely.”

 _Six months_ , the thought beat against the inside of his skull, like a caged creature struggling to get out. No cramping nausea struck out after it this time, but the reel of half-fledged memories started up again, even less comforting now. He could try and try to hold himself together, and it just wasn’t working. He had to lean on Leia, trust himself to Luke’s lead, simple things first.

 _Kid can’t even take care of himself_ , he’d said to Chewie in that smelly dungeon, _much less rescue anybody_. He’d never been so wrong.

 _And you owe him an apology, big time_. Sarcasm flashed and faded with that matchless piece of understatement. _More_ , Han thought, _hell, so much more_. None of them would be here if it hadn’t been for ―

“We’re here!” A whoop from Lando ripped through his muddling thoughts, and Leia echoed it with a shout. Behind them, Chewie pressed for a faster pace.

Out of the dimness emerged a dark blur and took on the Falcon’s shape, Luke’s X-wing sitting dwarfed beside her. Han pushed the goggles out of his sight and blinked. Light from the setting suns glittered on the sand, setting it afire in mid-air like a myriad glowbugs. And he could see well enough, now that the Falcon’s bulk kept off the wind.

He took a step towards her and another, and maybe Leia could sense that he had to live through this moment alone. Her hand dropped away just as the Falcon’s shadow fell across him. But the carbon freeze had left him too raw and shaky to do more than stare. And breathe in deep, grateful gulps.

“This is it,” Luke’s voice said beside him.

Tired, but with an edge of quick goodbyes. Sand-funnels swirled in the gap between the Falcon and Luke’s fighter, raising dusty wings to take him from sight again. Too goddamn soon.

Han turned, and Luke’s face came abruptly clear. Leaner than he recalled, lined with new experience and resolve. The real change didn’t strike home ‘til he met Luke’s eyes. Calm and luminous but... empty. Empty of himself — and whatever had taken that place was nothing Han recognized. An older chill swept him from the bottom of his spine.

“What,” he started, plucking at disjointed thoughts, “you ― where you off to now?”

Luke hitched up his shoulders, the taut intensity of his expression softened by a copper twilight. “I’ll see you back at the fleet.”

All that calm resolve shone a little too bright for Han’s comfort, and he refused to back off. On instinct, on principle, it didn’t matter. “Why don’t you leave that old crate and come along with us? Be a lot faster.”

Time flipped over backwards, and they were on Yavin Four, roles reversed, attitudes changed and shifting. Wading through quicksand of some kind.

Something loosened in the set of Luke’s jaw and shoulders. “I can’t. I have a promise to keep first... to an old friend.”

He stepped back, and a strange sensation twisted in Han’s gut, tugging at him. Like he’d come up to the future’s doorstep and couldn’t predict a thing because he was missing too much of the past. _Friend, what friend?_

Dazed on the sidelines, he watched while Leia embraced Luke with express fervor, and Chewie reached across to muss the blond hair ― all those gestures of affection and concern unleashed suddenly on Luke, like loose energy amassing around him. But all through those goodbye rituals Luke kept his right arm wrapped tight round his middle and his hand under the makeshift cloak, protecting a negligible injury. It made no sense.

A sliding breeze summoned dust into a thin veil as the others filed up the ramp. Han dug his heels in. “Hey, kid―”

Something in his voice turned Luke back from that cutting brink of purpose. Closing the gap between them, Han put his hand out fast, slipped it under the coarse rag Luke had wrapped around himself. Gripping for nerve. He could trace the humming tension in every muscle when he touched Luke’s forearm. Felt it pass into him like live current while he groped for the right tone. The right words. _Say something, damnit_.

“Thanks for comin’ after me...” A pause owed to the catch in his breath. “You were pretty good out there.”

“I had a lot of help,” Luke answered, cool and gentle. “Think nothing of it.” Though he didn’t pull away just yet, something in his posture marked a distance that hadn’t been there before. Armored in six months of linear progress that’d been excised from Han’s life and swallowed up into vacuum.

 _A blistering white hole_ , he thought, and a sudden flare-up of recollection frizzed icily in his backbone. _Big white nothing like Hoth turned into a whole universe. Freezing_.

Two separate memories collided and merged. That night in the emergency shelter... Luke’s breath pluming white and uncertain into frosty air. _You gotta live, kid, don’t you dare do this to me_.

And this time Luke had come for him, through some hellfire of change that burned every line of his face into fierce clarity.

Han met his eyes in the gloomy nowhere light and caught Luke’s hand in his own. “No, I’m ― I’m thinking a lot about it. That carbon freeze was the closest thing to dead there is. And it wasn’t just sleepin’, it was... a big wide awake nothing.”

He felt crippled with the loss of time. His defenses shot to hell and all the usual moorings gone. He’d held on so hard to his independence ― and now he was straining for a connection, for something that could anchor him in this skinless existence. To give himself over, though he didn’t know how.

The slightest start of a smile parted Luke’s lips before he glanced down, taking that bright glimpse from view. But it took no more, and recollection burst from some locked compartment in Han’s mind. The taste of Luke’s mouth under his own, and that breathless smile in the hangar, a short while later. The same loaded silence had just sparked between them. A short-circuit overrun by memory.

Like he’d been struck by some rebellious cramp, he held on to Luke’s hand even as he pulled away. Luke dipped his head once more, and a smile flashed like a meteorite ― rode up, burned, fell ― for the space of one breath.

... _like he’ll explode if he opens that door just a crack_.

Another step, and Luke’s fingers slipped out of his own. Han turned from the windswirl that stung in his eyes. Lit particles streaming in a thousand directions. And a riddle clawing at the margins of his mind.

His vision had cleared again by the time he reached the top of the Falcon’s ramp. He could read Lando’s expression now, the vexed pressure of guilt and unease. He could see tears in Leia’s eyes. Outside, Luke’s X-wing was powering up.

 _Breathe_ , Luke’s voice slipped into his mind, gentle, and effortless. Infinitely familiar. _Han, please_...

Desperate.

Han screwed his eyes shut, the thump of one heartbeat tight in his throat. No longer holding himself together, no longer caring to try. He’d been unraveled at the seams and stitched into the bigger picture for good. No fight, not anymore. He owned nothing except the life he’d just been given and the urge to fly out on that blazing storm.

And belong.

* * * * *

**Author's Note:**

> First published in ELUSIVE LOVER 5, 2001.  
> This story is based on the sandstorm scene that was filmed for _Return of the Jedi_ but never made it into the finished movie. Inspired by the surviving movie dialogue, the description in the novelization, and some wonderful stills. (See one edited version of the original footage here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsb6j9_star-wars-episode-vi-deleted-scenes-tatooine-sandstorm_shortfilms)


End file.
